Mary, Princess Royal and Countess of Harewood - Marriage and Homes

Marriage and Homes

On 28 February 1922, Princess Mary married Henry Charles George, Viscount Lascelles (9 September 1882 – 23 May 1947), the elder son of Henry Lascelles, 5th Earl of Harewood, and Lady Florence Bridgeman, daughter of Orlando Bridgeman, 3rd Earl of Bradford of Weston Park. Their wedding at Westminster Abbey was the first royal occasion in which Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon (later Queen Elizabeth), a friend of Princess Mary's and one of the bridesmaids, participated. The Princess was 24, Lord Lascelles was 39.

The Princess and her husband had homes in London, Chesterfield House and in Yorkshire, first Goldsborough Hall, and later Harewood House. Whilst at Goldsborough Hall, Princess Mary had internal alterations made by the architect Sydney Kitson, to suit the upbringing of her two children and instigated the development of formal planting of beech-hedge-lined long borders from the south terrace looking for a quarter of a mile down an avenue of lime trees. The limes were planted by her relatives as they visited the Hall throughout the 1920s, including her father George V and her mother Queen Mary. Goldsborough railway station (now disused) was installed in the neighbouring village of Flaxby, along the Harrogate to York line, so that royal guests would have easy passage to the Hall.

On 25 March 1923 her first son George was christened at St Mary's Church that adjoins Goldsborough Hall by Cosmo Gordon Lang, Archbishop of York, the service was attended by King George V and Queen Mary. After becoming the Countess of Harewood on the death of her father-in-law, Princess Mary moved to Harewood House and took a keen interest in the interior decoration and renovation of the Lascelles family's seat. In farming pursuits, Princess Mary also became an expert in cattle breeding.

It was later known that she did not want to marry Lord Lascelles, that her parents forced her into an arranged marriage, and that Lascelles proposed to her after a wager at his club. Her brother the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VIII, with whom she was very close, was against the marriage because he did not want his sister to marry someone whom she did not love. Her elder son, the Earl of Harewood, however, wrote about his parents' marriage in his memoirs The Tongs and the Bones and challenged these widespread rumours that the marriage was an unhappy one. He says "that they got on well together and had a lot of friends and interests in common".

Princess Mary and Lord Lascelles had two sons:

• George Lascelles, 7th Earl of Harewood (7 February 1923 – 11 July 2011); married, 1949, Marion Stein; divorced 1967; married, 1967, Patricia Elizabeth Tuckwell; had issue.
• The Honourable Gerald Lascelles (21 August 1924 – 27 February 1998); married, 1952, Angela Dowding; had issue; divorced 1978; married Elizabeth Collingwood; had issue.